Femslash February: In the Long Ago
by mochiinvasions
Summary: As if Kanaya could ever be a consequence.


_I loved thee, Atthis, in the long ago,  
When the great oleanders were in flower  
In the broad herded meadows full of sun.  
And we would often at the fall of dusk  
Wander together by the silver stream,  
When the soft grass-heads were all wet with dew,  
And purple-misted in the fading light.  
And joy I knew and sorrow at thy voice,  
And the superb magnificence of love,—  
The loneliness that saddens solitude,  
And the sweet speech that makes it durable,—  
The bitter longing and the keen desire,  
The sweet companionship through quiet days  
In the slow ample beauty of the world,  
And the unutterable glad release  
Within the temple of the holy night.  
O Atthis, how I loved thee long ago  
In that fair perished summer by the sea!_

(23)

* * *

Once she died and now eternity stretches before her, endless (for that is what eternity is, surely) and empty. Once the idea of infinity would have excited her, would have her thinking solely of the knowledge she could gain and the things she could learn, the ideas she could form and tease out to their final state and the futures she could create with the focusing of her powers. Eternity did not mean living forever – it meant having forever to live – and she did not then think of the secondary consequences.

As if Kanaya could ever be just a consequence.

They had years together – decades, centuries even. When they first met they were so young, and they were awkward and they fumbled around each other and, at the time it seemed so long, but now it feels like it took a second between the time they first talked and the time they first kissed.

Sometimes she dreams of another world, a different world, where they were two people, normal people, with normal problems and normal issues who fell in love, had a long and fulfilling life together, and died within years of each other. In this world, the grasses they roam are simply in the woods behind their house. In this world, when they go on adventures it means a weekend in the city. In this world, problems were simple and heartbreak did not mean screwing up big time, just temporary loneliness. In this world, there is no world to be saved, no universe to create, no game to play – there is just them.

But the world she dreams of is not the world she lives in, and in the world she lives in she retains all the memories of her past life, and strongest always is Kanaya.

(Sometimes, she imagines letting the nightmares take over so that it might be Just and she might find Kanaya, wherever she is).

Her strongest memories are the simplest: sitting together, reading together, being together.

They are exploring a new, alien land, that Rose thinks looks suspiciously like a garden she's seen on Earth, and they are walking through a soft, quiet row of flowers following a track alongside a stream softly babbling and sunset's orange is painting the earth and shining through the trees and illuminating the sharpness of Kanaya's face, and she takes her hand just to be closer to her.

(They were attacked).

Several centuries later and a new universe is growing around them, and they are its gods and its creators and Kanaya says she can feel death coming. Life and death for a troll is short and violent, and even now, in their present circumstances, this stretched out life feels odd – Kanaya compares it to wearing a dress for so long that it no longer fits but you keep wearing it because you love it, no matter how uncomfortable it feels.

'I can feel death,' she says, one day, and Rose crumples. She gathers Kanaya close to her and closes her eyes and holds her breath and waits until her chest lightens a bit before the words come out – I love you/please don't leave me/it's not right without you/you made me so much better.

Kanaya's voice is soft and gentle, just slightly tinged with bitterness at being taken, anger that even with all their centuries her love has millennia left to go. She takes Rose's hands in both of hers and looks her in the eye and talks and Rose can feel it, all of it – sadness and joy; the way that Kanaya taught her what it _meant_ to love; the infinite loneliness that comes with eternity and the knowledge that almost all your loved ones will die; the voice and the hands and the heart that makes it better – even if she's one of those loved ones; the sweetness of a companion throughout all the years of her life and the way that the world moves slowly for her, though it should be an instant and Kanaya was with her all the way.

At night, she sits on the ground and watches the sun set and sometimes rise, just thinking. Sometimes, she dreams of Kanaya next to her, on top of her, inside her, the way hands feel on skin and lips on lips and the sweet release that came with it and the breathy sighs she used to make.

(Sometimes she prays for an ancient evil so she can fight them and get it right this time, but she'd let herself make a mistake and it'd be Heroic and she'd find her).

Immortality, she reflects, is endless emptiness; siblings beloved dealing with griefs of their own who visit once a decade or so; a simple stone placard on a cold mountain flourishing with flowers, with a spring flowing down it and a flawless view of the sunset; an empty house and an empty heart and the constant feeling of missing something you can never get back.

* * *

One of my favourite poems, one of my favourite ships, more angst than you need.


End file.
